(1) Field of the Invention
The invention relates to an vacuum suction and cleaning appliance for water and/or dust comprising, integrated into one shell:                a nozzle,        ventilation means,        a clean-water tank,        an air-water separator,        a recovery tank for soiled liquid and/or dust located under said separator,        a handle allowing handling the appliance and the nozzle with one hand,        heating means using a ceramic for electrical and thermal insulation.        
The invention relates to the field of the movable cleaning appliances, and in particular of the household electrical appliances.
(2) Description of the Prior Art
In the field of the large appliances, there exist vacuum-cleaners or vapor vacuum-cleaners usable to suck up water and dust. In the field of the manual or portable appliances, and as soon as the air flow is correct, the existing appliances are seldom designed to suck up liquids. Or they have low performances because they do not have a liquid/gas separator, which is necessary as soon as the air flow is constant, since the only effect of gravity in small volumes does not allow achieving a sustained vacuum. Moreover, these appliances are often poorly suited, generally provided with traditional woven or foam filters, or with water traps included in the tank through which passes the air. These systems will never allow a sustained air flow and only partially retain water. Moreover they require cleaning, even a regular replacement. The appliances having a built-in and small-size heating body, i.e. with a mass of 2 kg or less, have a low power, generally lower than 1300 Watts, and a vacuum capacity lower than 10 kPa.
Various attempts have been made to manufacture household utensils including a function of separation between air, on the one hand, and a liquid or liquid and solid phase with suspended dust, on the other hand. These attempts generally fail because of insufficient efficiency of the means implemented for purifying the air.
WO 94/24920 is thus known, which describes a vapor vacuum-cleaner, in which the separation of the phases is carried out only by the combination of a liquid separator and a simple deviation partition directing the liquid towards a receptacle, the air being directed towards a filtering chamber, which must then be provided with a filter. The use of this filter shows the imperfect effectiveness of such a device.
U.K. 2 382 042 describes a centrifugal filter with a brush, of a known type, in which an air flow loaded with liquid and dust passes, at least partly, through a rotary brush, which ejects at the periphery a large part of the liquid and dust. Here too, the effectiveness is limited, because of significant pressure drops, and the need for juxtaposing, in series, several devices of the same type, to manage to make the air sufficiently clean for its rejection into the environment. Therefore, the size is necessarily large and proves incompatible with the use for a household appliance, a fortiori for a light appliance intended to be handled with one hand. These systems do not guarantee that dry or wet particles will be retained. In addition, the tightness is not complete at the level of the brushes, since the air loaded with impurities can bypass the brush and circulate towards the evacuation conduit.
There are known vacuum-cleaners for water and dust, for example shampooing cleaners, ejectors-extractors, or vapor vacuum-cleaners, which are bulky and exist almost exclusively in canister, sledge, sometimes brush version, because of the poorly suited or non-existing water/air separation systems.
A difficult case of cleaning is the cleaning of glass surfaces that have previously been humidified with water or vapor. This cleaning, in the event of suction by ventilation, requires the vacuum suction appliance to include a liquid-separating filter placed on the air circuit before the latter is expelled from the appliance.
The design of lightweight portable household appliances implies a number of choices as regards the dimensioning of the devices installed to meet the basic functions, and the judicious combination of which must enable achieving a sufficient efficiency of the appliance that makes it usable.
Though the problem of the quality of the gas phase separation requires, as we have seen above, a large volume and weight in the solutions known from the state of the art, one is generally also confronted with the problem of generation of a sufficient quantity of vapor, with a perfectly satisfactory safety for the user.
The generation of vapor generally occurs by using electrical resistances. The presence of electric circuits, and switching means necessary for their control by the user, in a medium that is wet by nature, generally requires the installations to be grounded. This grounding classically results into the use of a power cord with three wires, one of which is for grounding. Compared to a two-wire power cord, which, in absolute terms, would be sufficient for supplying energy to the heating resistance, passing to three wires results into an increase of the cost, weight, but also of the volume generated by the power-supply function. This constraint namely impedes any design with a cord take-up drum, for a sledge-type appliance or small manual household appliances, which is against the expectations of the market.
The solutions in which the network supply would be omitted, in particular by using batteries or/and cells, are currently not viable, because of the high weight of the energy-storage means necessary for a sustained production of vapor, incompatible with a manual use, and also because of the high cost of this equipment.
The cleaning of windows or other supports is a household problem for which there has not been developed any economical solution that enables to carry out in one passage the application of vapor or a hot or cold liquid product and simultaneously a strong suction, with a vacuum close to or higher than 15 kPa, with a light, compact, portable or manual appliance. A difficult problem is that of its gripping with one hand by the user, who must often work at a high level, and can have to hold the apparatus at the end of his arm, depending on the equipment at his disposal to work at a high level.
The aim of the invention is to cope with these main difficulties by providing a compact, light, powerful, economical and ecological, preferably portable household cleaning appliance, water and/or dust recovery appliance, having a self-cleaning separation system, usable in all positions, and especially with high efficiency characteristics as regards generation of heating energy and purification of the air released into the environment, which are higher than those that are difficultly achieved by larger-size appliances, often compelled to roll because of their volume and their mass.